Lionsgate Acquires TV Rights To Biography Of UK Spy Kim Philby

Lionsgate has optioned TV rights to Ben Macintyre‘s best-selling biography A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby And The Great Betrayal to be adapted by Flags Of Our Fathers scribe Bill Broyles for Allison Shearmur Prods. Shearmur and Broyles will executive produce. Published last month in the UK, A Spy Among Friends presents a riveting portrait of Philby, history’s most notorious master spy who rose to head Britain’s counterintelligence against the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War while secretly working with the enemy. Macintyre’s account focuses on Philby’s relationships and betrayals of his two closest friends in the intelligence world: Nicholas Elliott of MI6 and CIA intelligence chief James Jesus Angleton. Crown Publishers is releasing the book in the U.S. on July 29.

Lionsgate has scored with book adaptations on the film side with The Hunger Games, Twilight and Divergent. It also produces Netflix’s series Orange Is The New Black, based on Piper Kerman’s memoir. Shearmur is executive producing several projects for Lionsgate TV including an adaptation American Psycho. Macintyre is repped by Paradigm and by Ed Victor in the UK. Broyles is also repped by Paradigm.